Indonesian Volcanoes and Galactic Vistas

I recently got an email from astrophotographer Teoh Hui Chieh, who was sending me several photos and a time-lapse animation she took near the volcano Mount Bromo in Indonesia. The shots are lovely, as you’ll see in a moment.

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That very same day, about an hour or two later, I got an email from astrophotographer Thierry Legault, who was sending me several photos and a time-lapse animation he took near the volcano Mount Bromo in Indonesia. The shots are lovely, as you’ll see in a moment.

But what the what?

Yup. Coincidence. They don’t know each other, but they were both in that location around the same time, and shot remarkable images of the land- and skyscape.

There’s no losing here; both are gorgeous. I love the shots of the volcano (Mount Semeru) venting steam as the stars whirl above it, and the lights from cars illuminating the fog below. If I saw such a scene in a movie I would have thought it fantasy! But it exists.

The image at the top of this post is from Hui Chieh. I’m so used to seeing star trails in the Northern Hemisphere, it took me a moment to realize that shows the south celestial pole! That’s impossible to see north of the equator, but this scene is at a latitude of about -8°, just south of the equator, so the southern sky’s pole is just barely above the horizon.

As for the coincidence, well, they happen. It’s a big world, with countless things happening all the time. People who say, “I don’t believe in coincidences” (usually in the movies, when it so happens that events were not coincidental) in general just don’t have a good grasp of large number statistics. Given world enough, and time, unlikely events occur. Like having two world-class photographers send me pictures from the same spot at the same time. I’ll take it.